Honest question. Do you think the GNOME project is as healthy today as it was, say, 4 years ago? Benjamin Otte explains that no, it isn't. GNOME lacks developers, goals, mindshare and users. The situation as he describes it, is a lot more dire than I personally thought.

Secondly, the distinction obviously appeared when the idea of tablets was widely introduced. That's what I meant by "from the start". I.e. from the start of tablets period KDE made an effort to approach them with distinct design, while Gnome didn't.